A national environmental correspondent during the last decade of her 28 years at The New York Times, Felicity provided an in-depth look at the adoption of AB 32, California’s landmark climate-change bill after covering state’s carbon reduction carbon policies. more »

Posted In:

California’s resistance to federal plans loosening vehicle emissions standards is nothing new. Over the decades, the state has fought repeatedly to stay in the forefront of pollution controls.

When the Smog Rolled In Traffic on the Hollywood Freeway near Ventura Boulevard in the spring of 1972, left. Right, downtown Los Angeles in 1973. Gene Daniels, US Environmental Protection Agency via the National Archives

California has been here before, more than half a century ago. As was true then, forces in Washington, D.C. want to loosen emission requirements and strip California of its ability to impose tough standards for vehicle emissions, and once again, California officials are fighting back.

Smog Debate Echoes in Climate Change Concerns

Today, the issue goes beyond the cleaner but still polluted air around Los Angeles and throughout the Central Valley — to greenhouse gases that exacerbate climate change.

The parallels are striking. In the 1960s and 70s, at issue was the smog-laden air in and around Los Angeles, and California’s use of emerging science to pioneer new regulatory controls. Today, the issue goes beyond the cleaner — but still polluted — air around Los Angeles and throughout the Central Valley to combatting greenhouse gases that exacerbate climate change. Change that, in turn, harms air quality by supercharging wildfires that have devoured millions of acres and shrouded large parts of the state in choking smoke.

Ozone levels, then and now, are one obvious parallel. Concentrations of the gas, which is generally emitted by both vehicles and industry, have improved fivefold since 1980 in eight southern California air basins. Nonetheless, those eight basins are still on the American Lung Association’s most recent list of the 10 worst in the country. David D. Parrish, a scientist working as a consultant on atmospheric chemistry, estimates it will take more than three decades before these basins meet national standards.

At an Environmental Protection Agency hearing in Fresno last Monday, Mary Nichols, who chairs California’s Air Resources Board, said that Fresno and Los Angeles are “ground zero for the most stubbornly persistent violations of air standards in the nation.” And the air quality is deteriorating — southern California had 87 straight days of smoggy air this summer. It’s been two decades since it saw a stretch of ozone violations like that. Dr. Parrish said that without the more stringent controls demanded by California, “there’s a very real possibility that total concentration [of ozone] will creep up.”

Once Again, Cost Is a Defense for Opponents of Pollution Control

1970 Oldsmobile Toronado.

“General Motors does not at this time know how to get production vehicles down to the emission levels that your bill would require for 1975 models.”— E.M. Cole, General Motors Executive, in 1970Photo: Bull-Doser via Wikimedia Commons

If the air quality arguments for tough rules today mimic those of 1967, so do the arguments for regulatory restraint. “I was distressed to learn that the Senate Public Works Committee has voted approval of an air pollution bill that would require that 1975-model cars have a 90 per cent reduction in emissions from 1970 models,” wrote General Motors’ president E.M. Cole to the Senate in September, 1970. “As ‘you may recall, in our meeting Aug. 25 I stated that General Motors does not at this time know how to get production vehicles down to the emission levels that your bill would require for 1975 models, ” he continued. “Accomplishment of these goals, as far as we now know, simply is not technologically possible within the time frame required.”

Technically, Cole was right, in that it took a few years longer to reach the EPA’s mandate, But it was far from impossible. GM cars eventually met the emission standards of the 1970 Clean Air Act a couple of years later.

When the new federal standards were being proposed, according to a 1973 research paper by Congressional Quarterly, “The Society of Automotive Engineers predicted that,” — at a time when the average car cost less than $5,000 — “catalytic converters could add $860 to the price and operating costs of 1976 models, compared with 1970 models.” But a 2004 study done for the Air Resources Board by Institute of Transportation Studies University of California, Davis found that eight cost analyses showed that, at most, the per-car price increase was half that amount. Like Cole’s prediction, the automotive engineers’ warning was significantly exaggerated.

In another echo, this year, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the E.P.A., said that freezing the Obama-era federal rule, – which now meets the California standard – would mean lower prices, and they seek to “give consumers greater access to safer, more affordable vehicles, while continuing to protect the environment.”

In 1967, Detroit Sought Unsuccessfully to Bring California to Heel, and a “Waiver” Was Born

Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, right, with John F. Kennedy around 1961.Wikimedia Commons

The second part of the Trump administration proposal, stripping California of the ability to set tougher emission standards than the Federal government, also mimics what defenders of the auto industry sought to do in 1967. Then, as now, California leaders were fiercely protective of the scientific and regulatory advances. During a 1967 Senate debate, Sen. George Murphy, a California Republican, argued, “the extraordinary and compelling circumstances that have existed in California have prompted the state to move into uncharted areas” of research and regulation. He proposed a waiver, so California could go its own way.

This was anathema to carmakers, who worried that they would have to design vehicles to two different standards — California’s, and the rest of the country’s. Rep. John Dingell, the Michigan Democratic representative who was the carmakers’ man in Congress, proposed an amendment ensuring federal rules would preempt California’s. The Golden state’s congressional delegation fought back with bipartisan solidarity. The waiver was eliminated in a House committee, but overwhelmingly restored by the full house. Gov. Ronald Reagan cheered the “hard work and united front California has presented” in Congress. Now 12 other states align their emission control standards with California’s.

Bill Lane Center for the American West

Tom Jorling, a Republican aide to the Senate subcommittee on air and water quality, said that Dingell “basically felt that the automotive industry, whatever they wanted to do, whatever their plans were for producing vehicles were the correct ones. The government had no standing dictating what kinds of vehicles they would produce.”

State officials remain as resolute about the need for regulatory independence as they were in 1967, during the Air Quality Act debate on the original waiver, or 1970, during the debate over the CLean Air Act. After Monday’s Fresno hearing, Nichols said “We’ll continue to enforce our laws, even if the federal government rolls theirs back.” The standard California and the Obama Administration had agreed to requires cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles to average 36 miles per gallon by 2025. The Trump administration proposes to freeze the standards at the 2020 year model year, cutting about six miles per gallon from the original goal.

Experts believe the changes will not only allow release of far more carbon dioxide, but will likely mean a slow retrenchment in gains made over traditional pollutants, like ozone, a gas formed when sunlight cooks a mixture of volatile organic compounds, (from paint, varnishes, disinfectants and cleaning fluids) and the nitrogen oxides in car emissions. It is a respiratory irritant, is visible as smog — the same kind in the air right outside the Fresno hearing.

“There would be more emissions and a half billion barrels of oil burned that would not otherwise be burned through 2030,” said Stanley Young, a spokesman for California’s Air Resources Board. He added that that would be 5,600 additional tons of smog during the same period.

Public Opinion Again Backs Pollution Efforts

Another echo of the past is the strong reaction of everyday Californians. Back then, Los Angeles residents knew that breathing their air was the equivalent of smoking seven cigarettes a day. As many as 6,000 people joined one demonstration against smog in 1954; a few years later a group called Stamp Out Smog clamored for relief.

A half century later, it is wildfire smoke that is bedeviling California communities. A poll this month by the Public Policy Information Center showed 65 percent of state residents favor the state acting on its own to combat global warming. Two-thirds say that the impact of climate change is already being felt. And smog remains an issue — dozens of people turned out to testify in Fresno Monday, several with respiratory ailments.

As science in the 1950s showed that motor vehicle emissions cause smog or ground-level ozone, the science of subsequent decades shows the carbon dioxide emitted by motor vehicles causes climate change. These gases are the target of the fuel-efficiency regulations the federal government set in 2012, covering model years through 2025 — the ambitious rules now being scaled back.

In 1967 and 1970, California won in Washington, and when it went to court, it was to defend — successfully — the regulatory requirements it had pioneered. Now, unless there is an agreement with the federal agencies, the state has promised it will be back in court, this time as the plaintiff.

That’s the battle the state has promised if the federal government tries to strip it of independent regulatory authority.

As Nichols, who chairs the Air Resources Board, said in a speech last spring, ”Some issues never seem to die.”

The growth of almond orchards has made the Central Valley the new center of gravity for migratory beekeeping. With this shift has come new concerns over the health and safety of bee colonies, both on the road, and while they forage in California’s crops.

The growth of almond orchards has made the Central Valley the new center of gravity for migratory beekeeping. With this shift has come new concerns over the health and safety of bee colonies, both on the road, and while they forage in California’s crops.

Paul McPherson

The solution isn't in reducing the number of cars, as pretty much everyone needs them. Unless a large scale, efficient, cheap and clean public transportation network appears out of thin air, there's no reducing the number of personal vehicles. The idea could be to have clean energy replace the usual combustion engine in these cars; the automotive market's going to undergo a large scale transformation with the generalisation of self driving cars anyways (some other economical sectors, such as real estate, even calculate how it will change their activity and consumer behavior: https://tranio.com/articles/how-self-driving-cars-will-change-the-proper... ) so, since people are going to buy a new type of car anyways, why couldn't it be self driving AND clean?

Submit a Comment

We'd like to know what you think. We will not share your email address or add you to any lists. If you'd like to be notified about new blog posts and news from the Center, you can join our mailing list.

Name *

Email *

Location

Comment or Question *

Publish Name

Please do not publish my name

Email Notifications

Yes, I'd like to be notified when "& the West" has new posts

You will receive emails no more than once a week. We will not share your information.

A Sanitation Crisis at the Border. Water contaminated with sewage could have health impacts in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, whose residents are advocating for water treatment plants and updates to infrastructure. Ticklish relations between the United States and Mexico complicate sewage management policies. NRDC

A Measure to Cut Back Wyoming’s Wilderness Study Areas Advances. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Liz Cheney, would release around 400,000 acres of federal wilderness study areas in Big Horn, Lincoln and Sweetwater counties to general management, eliminating special protections. Park County commissioners are hoping that the bill will be amended to also release the local McCullough Peaks and High Lakes wilderness study areas to less restrictive management. The Powell Tribune

Recycling Scandal Crosses State Lines. A group of Arizona residents are accused of stealing over $16.1 million from California’s beverage recycling program by bringing in thousands of bottles and cans from Arizona. The CalRecycle program gives California residents an opportunity to earn back a tax added to bottled goods by recycling their bottles and cans at special facilities. This is the first recycling scandal in California to cross state jurisdictions. Arizona Republic

Gray Wolves’ Protection Under the Endangered Species Act May Not Last, if a bill just passed by Congress becomes law. The measure ends federal protection from the wolves in the 48 contiguous states. In the Northwest, where wolves are considered endangered in the western two-thirds of Oregon and Washington, state agencies would take over. Environmental groups say the wolves’ recovery goals are not far off, but may not be reached if the federal government bows out. Oregon Public Broadcasting

Their Canadian Cousins Thrive, But the Orcas of Puget Sound Face An Existential Crisis. While they are the most studied whales in the world, they among the most endangered orcas. As the population of Canadian orcas has grown by 250 percent since 1974, and is at 309, the population of Puget Sound’s pods, now 74, has grown barely nine percent in the same period. Experts blame the impact of the expanding human and industrial presence in the orcas’ range. The three southern pods have not successfully reproduced in three years. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has put together a task force on recovering the whales. Seattle Times

The Navajo Tribe’s Future Without Its Major Employer and With a New President. As the various financial schemes for prolonging the life of the Navajo Generating Station fell apart, tribal members who work there must choose between finding employment where the new owners assign them, or staying on the reservation until the plant closes a year from now, then having a small chance of any job that pays as well. Their decisions will be made against a new political backdrop, as Joseph Nez, at 43, was just elected the youngest Navajo president ever. ASU/Cronkite NewsIndian Z News

Rare Dinosaur Fossils Are Threatened by the reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Vast areas of land that may contain important paleontological discoveries are now vulnerable to potential energy development. About 250,000 acres of land with a high potential for fossils are being considered for mineral development. Salt Lake Tribune

A Water Reckoning in Colorado. Farming communities in the North Fork Valley of Colorado are water-rich in an era of increasing water scarcity. Farmers continue to use high volumes of water for irrigation. However, with climate change, the community will have to change outdated and inefficient systems in order to share water more cooperatively. High Country News

Indigenous Food Sovereignty in British Columbia. Activist Jessie Housty, a member of the Haíłzaqv nation, is educating young people in her community about their traditional food sources and culture. Her efforts are part of a larger movement to address food insecurity and malnutrition in indigenous communities through providing access to cultural foods. Civil Eats

Graphics & the West

Recent Center News

Dec 17 2018 | ... & the West Blog, ... & the Best | Posts Recommended by the ... & the West Blog

Pollution on the California-Mexico border; snowpack heads for a steep decline; water decisions cut both ways; utilities enact wildfire safety measures, and more. Some of the best reads from the past week.

Dec 4 2018 | ... & the West Blog, ... & the Best | Posts Recommended by the ... & the West Blog

A recent federal report details economic impacts of climate change on the West; the private firefighting industry is growing; sewage poses health risks for border towns; a recycling scandal crosses state lines between California and Arizona and other recent articles about the West’s environment.